Mike Spinelli

The practice of specialty carbuilders reviving sports-car names of old has taken a turn for the East. The family of Heinz Melkus — who back in Iron Curtain days built sports cars powered by the gnarly three-cylinder, two-stroke engines of the people's Wartburg line — has a plan to build a new version of the RS1000, a plastic-bodied sportster from the 1960s with gullwing doors and a large following. Only 10 of the new models, powered by an engine of original spec, will be built. After that, the group will work up a new model, the RS2000, in partnership with EDAG Engineering of Germany that'll cost a very bourgeois $73,000.